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The visit to OC of Mayor Rocky Anderson — a man whose perspective and accomplishments I respect and a man who I wish weren’t running for President — prompts me to pull out a partly completed post from our pile of drafts. It’s about why I’ll support “the lesser of two evils” in a Presidential election: to avoid a third evil.

I know that some people are absolutely committed to a principle of not being complicit in supporting anything that’s wrong — which means holding potential representatives up to an awesome and unforgiving standard. I don’t think it’s that productive to argue about basic beliefs like those that won’t be dislodged, but I’ll tell you my position as a reformist Democrat who plans — despite the use of drones, despite the assaults on civil liberties, despite the warm words for “clean coal,” despite the coziness with Wall Street, despite the lack of real effort for single-payer or a public option, despite the free-trade deal with Colombia, despite even the horrible and destructive invasion of California’s province to allow for medical marijuana — to vote for President Obama this fall, warts and all.

Ant that is this: I no longer worry about voting for the person who will represent me. The politicians who will represent what I actually think are fairly rare — and got more rare ten years ago when Paul Wellstone died. What I vote for is the politicians whom I most want to be able to influence. Period.

There is no question in my mind that, despite my disagreement with Obama over many issues, I and people like me will be able to have much more influence on him than on Romney (or Gingrich, Santorum, etc. If you want to vote for Paul, go ahead — especially in November.)

You may point to Obama’s still having us in Afghanistan (although I think he’s making good faith efforts to extricate us.) I point to the fact that the hot war in Iraq is over — and under McCain it would not be. We influenced him there. We helped make it possible. Had McCain won, it not only would not have been possible, but we’d already be at war in Iran.

This approach is not “the lesser of the two evils.” It’s “the greater of the two opportunities.”

Voting in search of a true representative is an act that puts your ego on the line. You can vote for Jill Stein or Rocky Anderson and feel that you’ve been represented, that your soul and hands are clean, but without really determining who will be the next President. If that is how you feel, then I know I can’t talk you out of it and will try not even to try.

But when I vote for Barack Obama, it’s not because I buy his agenda A to Z, and I reserve the right to oppose parts of it with all my might. It just means that I think that, in 2016, people who share my values would look back and see that we have gotten more of what we want, and gotten closer to what we what after that, under an Obama Presidency than under the Presidency of any Republican running — by far.

Having had the ability to mitigate harm — yes, the same principle that we talk about when supporting things like “needle exchange” programs — and not mitigating it is the third evil. When I support needle exchange programs, I suffer greatly sometimes for having to convince people that I am not “pro-heroin” but am “anti-HIV and Hep-C.” Similarly, when I vote for Obama, it is not because I am pro-marijuana crackdown, but because I am pro-choice — and I feel the obligation then to redouble my efforts to criticize him and to work against his policies in the areas where I disagree. But the failure to mitigate — to let Romney into office and appoint Supreme Court Justices just because I do not want to be stained with the filth of compromise — that, to me, is the greater evil then supporting Obama (to the extent that that’s an “evil” at all.)

I believe that this leaves my soul and hands as clean as possible. I would not feel clean having contributed to a repeat of the Bush-Cheney years.

Two monks were strolling by a stream on their way home to the monastery. They were startled by the sound of a young woman in a bridal gown, sitting by the stream, crying softly. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she gazed across the water. She needed to cross to get to her wedding, but she was fearful that doing so might ruin her beautiful handmade gown.

In this particular sect, monks were prohibited from touching women. But one monk was filled with compassion for the bride. Ignoring the sanction, he hoisted the woman on his shoulders and carried her across the stream–assisting her journey and saving her gown. She smiled and bowed with gratitude as he noisily splashed his way back across the stream to rejoin his companion.

The second monk was livid. “How could you do that?” he scolded. “You know we are forbidden even to touch a woman, much less pick one up and carry her around!”

The offending monk listened in silence to a stern lecture that lasted all the way back to the monastery. His mind wandered as he felt the warm sunshine and listened to the singing birds. After returning to the monastery, he fell asleep for a few hours. He was jostled and awakened in the middle of the night by his fellow monk. “How could you carry that woman?” his agitated friend cried out. “Someone else could have helped her across the stream. You were a bad monk!”

“What woman?” the tired monk inquired groggily.

“Don’t you even remember? That woman you carried across the stream,” his colleague snapped.

“Oh, her,” laughed the sleepy monk. “I only carried her across the stream. You carried her all the way back to the monastery.”

I put down my worries about supporting all of Obama’s policies long ago. I will vote for him because it will mean that other policies that I also care about will be better and that the policies I disagree with will be no worse than they will if Romney is elected.

I put down my guilt at voting for someone with whom I don’t agree 100% — or even 85% — long ago. Why are others still carrying it? It leads to the third evil — people who know better allowing wrongful policies to prosper.

About Greg Diamond

Prolix worker's rights and government accountability attorney and General Counsel of CATER. His anti-corruption work in Anaheim infuriated the Building Trades and Teamsters in spring 2014, leading them to work with the Democratic Party of Orange County Chair and other co-conspirators (who had long detested the internal oversight his presence provided) to remove him from the position of DPOC North Vice Chair of in violation of party rules and any semblance of due process. He also runs for office sometimes.
Unless otherwise specifically stated, none of his writings prior to that lawless putsch ever spoke for the Democratic Party at the local, county, state, national, or galactic level. He tries to either suppress or openly acknowledge his partisan, issue, ideological, and "good government" biases in most of his writing here. If you have a question about any particular writing, just ask him about it and (unless you are an pseudonymous troll) he will probably answer you at painful length.
He lives in Beautiful Bountiful Brea, but while he may brag about it he generally doesn't blog about it. A family member works as a campaign treasurer for candidates including Wendy Gabriella in AD-73; he doesn't directly profit from that relatively small compensation and it doesn't affect his coverage. He does advise some campaigns informally and (except where noted) without compensation.

Back for just one more thing. Nixon was a Republican. Folks like to say he was the last Liberal president we had, though. Why? Because he feared social movements to a certain extent. We the people reaped the benefits of ‘influencing’ Nixon in the form of the EPA, OHSA, Mine Health and Safety Act, etc

“Me and Greg are in the business of redeeming the word liberal, not assassinating it by attaching it to a guy like Nixon.”…….. Hmmmmm

Kudos to you and Golem to attaching it to a guy like Obama.

However, you both ignoring the fact that “the word liberal” was attached to leftists like Che, Fidel, Mao, Stalin, Lenin etc. etc. etc. who, all together, murdered about 100 million people in last century in the name “liberalism”.

So I want to see how you and Golem gone redeem the word liberal or any acronyms of it like socialist, leftist, progressive and bolshevik, Gröfaz?

Who knows?….. liberal moron mongoloids like you two may actually do that in this blog by stigmatizing your opposition to call them haters, racist, anti-Semis and censure them by THE LIBERAL WAY.

It’s easy: Nixon was not a liberal. He was made to do things that, by today’s standards, would make him seem liberal by comparison. Hence, my statement that ‘folks like to say,’ which I thought would be quite easily comprehended. You like to say that Nixon’s record is what it is — domestically speaking…(Liberals subscribe to an imperialist foreign policy anyway) — because of establishment Democratic politics. I favor the belief that holds he feared social movements because they were particularly strong at that time.

As the Democratic establishment has veered further and further to the right in the last 30 years, social movements have shrunk, labor unions have declined rapidly and one of the major reasons why is because they give themselves freely to a party that betrays them continuously. A critical history of the Democratic Party illustrates time and time again that autonomous social movements become co-opted, minimized and finally, destroyed by that dynamic.

There’s no scare in the DNC elitists when the social base within and outside of the party just roll over. Power conceded nothing without a demand. Again, you said “What I vote for is the politicians whom I most want to be able to influence.” Your ability to influence is VASTLY outweighed by that of Wall Street where in concerns Obama. What I vote for is to simply protest the corporate duopoly with no illusions about my ‘influence’ and the stark democracy deficit that is our reality. That’s about all the thought and energy I expend on it.

What a convenient, self-satisfied, easy position for you to take in response! I gave you more red meat than that. Oh well.

Continue on with a moribund liberal class and advance the dynamic that has given us NAFTA, welfare deform, financial deregulation (including repealing Glass Steagall), horrific sanctions in Iraq, a surge in Afghanistan, Heritage Foundation health insurance deform, drone attacks, eroded civil liberties, a corporatized education agenda, a continued drug war, massive deportations of immigrants and the list from the last two blue administrations go on and on!

You think the Democratic elite care about your ability to influence? At the end of the day they’ve got your vote secured and don’t have to do a much of anything to even make you think twice about it! That, in effect, evaporates ‘influence’ and exacerbates the glaring democracy deficit.